1:01 AM
by pillbottle
Summary: He is coming, he is coming I close my eyes, listening to the pitterpatting of the rain the clicking of the coggworks. And I wait, obediently, silently. She'll wait forever... forever and a minute. [AU]


**Edit: **Experimental fanfiction that turned into a creative writing paper and then back into the fanfic. It got mutilated along the way -- do not mind the first and third person madness, _I_ and _she_ is the the same person (Rosette, respectably). It's kind of fucked up. _Chrno Crusade is not mine._

* * *

**1:01 AM**

The rain ran in streaks down the large bay window, creating countless beads of water, slipping down the pane and into the blackness below. Behind it, the night was a dark and endless void, stretching out as far as the eyes could see. Lighting struck the sky with forked tongues; brilliant blue-white in its ire, and utterly magnificent. For the briefest of seconds, it illuminated the grand courtyard below—the fountain bubbling over and spilling onto the cobblestones; the towering angels at the corners looking like sinister cloaked figures, water dripping of their grey marble wings. Beyond there, the forest stretched out into the distance, trees branches gnarled and crooked; helpless victims clawing at the earth in despair.

Safely guarded behind the wall of glass and encased in the rotting mansion; she looks out at the storm, facial features set into a permanent, unchanging expression. The skin is alabaster pale from spending many years in shadow, and the blue-green veins are clearly visible in my wrist as she reached out a fragile hand to touch the cool pane of the window. It immediately fogged the warm touch, creating a cloud of perspiration before it dispersed as quickly as it had formed.

Against my will, a twisted grimace works at the corners of my mouth as she try to smother the white fear building within myself, placing the other hand on the pocketwatch on her breast, reassured by its ticking and the synchronization of my heartbeats. They blend together as a single sound in the otherwise silent house, and it comforted me that there was some noise, as I lowered my eyes to gaze at the spindly black hands ticking around the circle of numbers. It's memorizing—almost hypnotic—and it soothes me with its repetitive, sweeping clicks.

Yet I am afraid—but afraid to too weak a word. Terrified, even. It's a deep fear that harbors deep inside your stomach; a settling monster that eats away at you.

Something is coming—no, she shouldn't fool herself so. She knows exactly what this is—what it is... _he_ is coming.

_He _is coming, he is coming—I close my eyes, listening to the pitter-patting of the rain; the clicking of the coggworks.

And I wait.

* * *

With an eerie, yet hauntingly melodic sound, the gigantic grandfather clock behind me tolls out a seemingly endless chime that bounces around the room before escaping out the hallway and down the corridors. She doesn't need to turn around to know what time it is—she's been counting down the minutes in her head; lips soundlessly moving to the ticks of my watch. 

One o'clock. Ghosting hour; devil's hour. It's time.

I knew for a fact that the great grandfather clock was broken. It had been ill-cared for and termite eaten—in such a dilapidated state that it was beyond repair. There was no pendulum to swing, and the in front had been smashed out a long time ago. The gears were cracked and out-of-line, and the all the hands were missing, 'cept the hour arm, which was crooked and twisted in such an angle it would never work again.

However. One o'clock, the gears mended and came together, heavy pendulum swinging gracefully back and fourth, perfectly in rhythm. I could hear the accented, thick clacking of the many hands rotating around. The ancient horologe had come together again. One o'clock; she knows.

Outside, the thrumming of the rain upon shingles and the roars of faraway thunder adding to her music, but I still found myself at unease. Although the room was capacious and lofty, she suddenly felt claustrophobic, as if she was being boxed in. Removing her hand from the window, I tucked a strand of stray hair behind her ear, taking deep, even breaths; although her pulse had increased, beating within my ears in a silent tempo.

"_Coming coming… coming coming coming coming coming... stay right there, pretty little thing… I'm coming…"_

She stiffened, shoulders hunching and standing rigid as both hands grasped unknowingly at my clock, muffling its sound, but I still counted out the seconds, whispering inaudibly. The thunder rumbled ominously, stepping ever closer to her abode, and I shivered, drawing in on herself. Perhaps she had only imagined it...

"_Coming… you pretty, pretty pretty little thing… don't worry… coming… coming coming coming… I'm coming… stay there, I'm coming… coming, coming…"_

It's a husky voice, as if it hadn't been used for ages, rasping sounding and almost painful to listen to. It speaks with rapid tongues, taking long pauses between and dragging out the ending syllables into stillness. The voice seems to echo from the walls; a spectral, ghost-like sound that reverberated in her ears.

"_Please… coming… pretty thing… stay, coming… coming coming coming coming coming…"_

There's suddenly a great emptiness inside her, as if something's missing; as if everything's escaped my fumbling hands and she's all but a husky shell of a body. I feel numb, and she doesn't notice that her breathing's slowed along with my heart, and she can't remember the touch of warmth on her hands anymore. They fall to my sides and hang there limply; cumbersome weights, dragging me down.

She raises her dull eyes to the window, already knowing what I'll see. She always knows what she'll see, but she clings to a false hope that one day it'll be gone, forevermore. Even then, though, I know that she's only lying to herself, and I'll always know what she'll see.

In the reflection of the window, I'm not alone anymore.

Beside her is him, staring back at themselves with a strange twisted grin. With a bit of courage, I smile softy, but that does not mean she's not fearless, because I am. She always is, no matter how many times the scenario repeats itself—month after month and year after year, but tonight... He'll always be there, and I'm still always afraid.

The presence next to her in the wavering image is a young boy—his clothes are non-descript and withdrawn of all colour, and so is his skin. He is not pale as she is, oh no, for he's whiter than I'll ever be, and his skin is almost translucent and bleached. It's simply an absence of color—as if all the life had been drained out. His long bangs are black and matted, falling just below his ears in tangled, matted locks. The light plays with his fine features, and there's a trick to his essence where it bends, and his outlines seemed to be fading away with the scenery.

Smoldering with something eerie and sinful, his eyes glow red in the darkness; the likeness of twin coals. In the middle of both are just slivers of black, the cat's pupils shrunken to mere pinpricks in the cornea, making them twice as intense. Unwillingly, a jack-o-lantern grin stretches his face impossibly wide, the tips of his lips curling just a mere inch below his ears. It seems frozen in that position, lopsided and displaying row upon row upon row of sharp eyeteeth. Macabre and ever so morbid. How so very like him.

I know that if I turn around, he won't be there. That isn't his world, in this dusty, forgotten place. He only exists here, in my own world of shimmering blown glass, where the panes are grey with rain and trapped sorrow. On shaky, unsteady feet, she rises; dress sweeping down around her ankles with a rush of heavy fabric, particles swirling chaotically in unknown patterns in the feeble light.

A wave of complex emotion and smells hit her without warning, and she sways on the spot, feeling faint, and my nose burns with the acidic odors. Blind terror; death. It's the smell of blood; overpowering and so metallic she can practically taste it on her tongue. Mind reeling, she tries to stagger backwards, but her feet are rooted to the spot, and my smile straightens and vanishes as I try not to vomit.

The second wave rises, and with it bringing with it the decaying smell of death and burning flesh. She gags violently, and for a second I feel so faint and detached, until the overpowering stench brings reality back with a clash of pain.

His grotesque smile widens. Dazed, I gaze into those red, red, demonic eyes, lit burgundy with a fire deep within. They are not cruel eyes, but they harbor a savage needing—a _hunger,_ a _wanting._ He cannot say a word, so he watches with a passion—no, I decide, its more than that by far—it's an obsession.

An addiction.

The hands continue to click around the clock, second hand eating away at time that will never return. The pendulum swings lazily from its fixed point, the brass clicks reminding me of what is to come.

I don't know that she is speaking until the frail sound reverbs inside my ears, meek compared to the rapidly ticking stopwatch in my heart. "It's..." she faltered, and her voice breaks, but I keep going on. She can't stop, she knows—not now.

"It's out of... time..." Just four little words, uttered in the quietest voice and rusty from lack of use; barely heard over the noise of the rain. But he always hears, and she can tell by the slightest flicker in his maniac grin, although his outwardly visage does not falter. His eyes bore into me, speaking volumes and more expressions than words could ever describe. I tilt my head slightly to the side—watching. It's his card to play, and the remaining time is trickling away.

A hand—gnarled and bulging with spidery veins that carves away under the rotting, disfigured, off-colored skin. The pointed nails are obsidian and sharp and long; some tearing off at the ends in ragged edges. All of the fingers are broken and mended with scars of twisted tissue, crooked and malformed, the bones stretching the skin taught.

Without a second thought, I take his offer, lightly resting my palm on his. It's surprisingly cool and light—as if it didn't exist at all, as if it wasn't there. His shape in the window distorts and seems to breaks away, leaving only a wavering after-image of a misshapen outline.

A silent, breathless pause. The rain beats down outside, oblivious. Somewhere far away, the thunder rumbles deafeningly, long and drawn-out. Lighting highlights the room once more.

A trickle of blood and saliva runs messily down her chin, bile burns the back of her throat, and I can feel my mouth stretching upwards into a ghostly smile.

Sanity forgotten, spiraling down, down down down down... away into the night.

* * *

Outside, the storm bleeds itself out slowly, clouds breaking apart to form a valley in the sky. The air seems unnaturally still in the calm, and not a sound is heard. There's a mansion, large and foreboding, at the edge of the forest. The windows—all but one—are boarded and shut; and you can search and search and search, but there's no entrance to be found, or exit—for it's sealed up like a tomb; like a secret worth saving. 

The moon is a silver sickle of milky iridescence; its soft glowing light falling in slants across the floor, painting it with shades of black and dirty white, crisscrossing with grey. You can tell the room hasn't been touched for ages, for the dust has piled up and settled; undisturbed for ages. There's an old grandfather clock; a discarded sheet, yellowed with age, draped around its skeletal frame.

Other than that, the only furniture in the room is a fashioned chair sitting wayward beside the bay window. Its upholstery is faded and ripped in places, spotted with dark stains of blood and age. On the seat is an old-fashioned pocketwatch, the kind you would have to wind the gears, but the key for that very purpose is missing. It is most unusual—for this watch has no numbers, no roman numerals. The face is white and blank with only two jagged spindles of hands, almost on top of each other, so close are they. It's a portrait trapped in the jaws of time.

Hiding itself behind the vast mural greyscape of clouds, the obnubilation blocks out the pale light of the moon. One by one, the stars wink out, their brilliance fading once again into blackness. A single raindrop slides down the grey marble of an angel's nose and onto the dampened bricks below as it seems to weep stony tears. Slowly, it begins to rain again, pitter-pattering against the cobblestones.

And inside, nothing moves. It is a dead, silent place, devoid of brightness and life. Only the susurrations of neglected monsters flitter down the halls, swirling the shadows and creating veils of gloom, waiting for imaginary partners that will never come. There are no ticks; no tocks; no clicking gears. All the clocks are stopped, and so is time. It's frozen; unmovable. Always, always, always.

_One o' clock... and one minute._


End file.
